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With Annual Losses Estimated At $14 Billion, It's Time To Get Smarter About Water

Children play inside steel pipes that will be used by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) on the construction of water system in Manila on April 4, 2011. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

My small town in Bergen County, New Jersey, is embroiled in a dispute right now with the local water utility, which officially is beholden to another town.

There are many issues being contested, including the utility’s rather antiquated method of estimating bills. Ahem. Right now, we receive them every three months (or so), which means it could be months before a leak or other problem in the water infrastructure goes undetected.

The World Bank, for one, suggests the annual global value of non-revenue water — water produced and lost by utilities — is close to $14 billion.

The average city water utility in the United States loses up to 30 percent through leaks or un-billed usage, according to figures from the water experts at Navigant Research. It is way higher in places like Delhi, India, where water losses are up around 53 percent. And from a national level, some emerging nations are experiencing losses of up to 38 percent, according to new projections from research and consulting company Northeast Group.

That’s one reason we’re about to see a massive uptick in deployments of technology focused on better management of water resources, particularly in emerging markets, where spending could reach $46.5 billion in investments by 2023, forecasts Northeast.

That money will go toward smart water maters, water networks, precision agriculture and irrigation systems, and advanced software analytics solutions.

The payoff will come in operational cost reductions ranging from 3 percent to 5 percent, as well as more accurate billing, enhanced leak detection, better customer service and even better consumer conservation habits.

The alternative is even more expensive, the research firm suggests. “Water scarcity is a growing problem across the globe, compounded by climate change and population growth,” Northeast writes in the executive summary for its report, “Emerging Markets Smart Infrastructure: Smart Water.”

The authors continue: “All signs indicate that this scarcity will only continue to grow more severe. Even as countries scramble to build water treatment and desalination plans and impose consumption restrictions, emerging market nations are still on average losing 38 percent of their water due to leaks from crumbling infrastructure and theft. … This lost water creates additional needs for costly treatment plants, increases the demand for energy from pumping stations, and puts added stress on already strained communities and environments. Meanwhile, lost revenue from this water only increases the need for government subsidies, which already are necessary to cover a significant portion of the costs of water in many countries.”

Many of us automatically associate smart grid or smart meter discussions with electricity. But monitoring and analytics solutions for managing water resource are becoming a very high-profile issue. Here are three U.S. pilots that could provide some lessons and best practices, at least in the United States:

Miami Dade Country – Another IBMIBM water pilot, an installation across the parks department could save up to $ 1 million in annual water bills.

San Francisco – Although there aren’t many publicly available results yet, the $50 million project is using 177,000 advanced meters from Aclara Technologies to reduce costs for meter reading and billing, investigate unusual consumption patterns, and eliminate inaccurate estimates.

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